NEW LIFE

I’m working with Raidy, a 5th grader, in my office.  He struggles to read and write on grade level.  At the beginning of our time together, we pray for him and for his family.  I pray for him to one day know Jesus.  He’s sitting at the small blue table doing a reading activity when a pre-school teacher stands in the doorway and mouths to me that Sylvia, a Makarios student and also member of my high school girls Bible Study, has passed away. 

In the beginning, God’s world was perfect.  There was no hunger.  There was no death.  When God created man, His relationship with Him was perfect too.  God is holy and He is just and He allows us to have free will.  He allows us to choose.  When man decided to run from God and not do His will, He sinned.  He missed the mark. God (in His holiness) could have nothing to do with him.  Man's relationship with God broke.  And consequently, everyone’s relationship with Him is broken.

And, as is true in life, sin has consequences.  We can see them.  The world that we live in also became broken.  Now, there’s hunger.  There’s death.  There’s sadness.  There are people killing others.  There are people who hate and others who fight.   We see things and experience things that were just not meant to be.  

And we, along with the world, are broken.  We do things we shouldn’t, think things we shouldn’t, and say things we shouldn’t.  We treat people in a way that does not please God. We judge our neighbors as if we don’t ourselves fall short.  Yet, we do fall short.  We fall short all the time. We are separated from God.  We find our value in things and make idols out of people, government, and money.  Our relationship with God and our relationship with each other is far from perfect.  It’s easy to see that there is something not right in us, even when we try to do right.

We search for a way out of the brokenness.  Sometimes by drinking, sex, or drugs.  We try to get richer or have the best things.  Sometimes we self-inflict pain or we fight.  Others go the other route and try to work off their bad by doing good things: going to church, not doing “bad" things or even by being kind to all those around them. Nothing we do is good enough to mend the brokenness although we yearn for the problem we have with God.  We yearn for restored relationships, healthiness and peace.   

From Genesis until now, we see that in spite of the crazy mistakes that the men and women of God did and do, He sought and seeks after them.  He forgives them, guides them, gives them another chance, and protects them. In Exodus 25 and Leviticus 16, God talks about the need for a sacrificial someone to take the place of our sins and His temporary way that He fixed our sin problem. Isaiah 43 points to the future chosen savior who “blots out our transgressions and remembers no longer our sins.”  And in Romans 5:6, Paul tells us that while we were still sinners, the Savior died for us.  BUT GOD, because of His love for us and His desire to have relationship with us as He did before, He sent His perfect son, JESUS, to die on the cross for us and bear the punishment (death) for our sins (John 3:16).  

And the story doesn’t stop there.  JESUS CONQUERS DEATH.  After He lives a perfect life, dies as a sacrifice our sins (taking our punishment of death), He rises again to new life.  Jesus thus shows us that there is new life after putting our faith in Him.

I send my student back to his classroom and float downstairs to see people with tear filled eyes.  There’s an eery quietness. Silvia had been in the hospital.  I had visited her days before and had plans to visit the following day with the girls.   The Martha in me spends the next few hours unsure of what to do.  The rituals in this culture are different than in my home country and although I have experienced death here, it’s foreign.  So, I find myself praying off and on for others who were closer to her than I, and I have the nagging question if she had truly accepted Christ as her Savior.  It’s all I can think about.

          The next week is a bit of a blur... 

That night I find myself at Sylvia's grand-aunts house helping to prepare the house for the body and all of the people who will come visit her family and sit outside in plastic chairs. Some will stay overnight until the burial the next morning.  Then, I’m walking with a big crowd to the cemetery, as the truck with her body blares “Mighty to Save.”  Sylvia was an orphan.  She was sick.  She had accepted Christ a few years before, and days before her death many testify that she was asking for scripture and her favorite songs.  She was sure of her saving faith in Christ.  Those who were with her in the end share that she knew that that day "so many would come visit her.”

I’m reminded that the most important thing -- not because I’m a missionary, but because I’m a believer --  is spreading His Word.  I’m reminded that at the end of the day, it’s what I wondered about her.  Did she know Him?  Did she love Him.  Yes, she went to church and Bible Study and Makarios, but did she really know Jesus?  After all, the Bible does say that many after they die will say Lord, Lord and He will say He never knew them. 

A few days later, I sit in an evangelism training with others from Family Ministry and learn a simple way to share my story.  

I used to be...

Then I chose to make Jesus King over my life.

Since then God has changed me. And now I am…. 

He continues to grow me each day to be more and more like Him.

I practice a variety of times, maybe 10 or so.  First with the leader, then with Andrea from Family Ministry, then in the group as a whole.  

After a while, we begin talking about the importance of sharing God’s story and who we should share with.  

We learn about people of peace.  They are those people that when you talk to them, they welcome your prayers, your continued conversation about God, and want to learn more.  We all have people of peace around us who don’t know Him yet.  They ask questions, they wonder, they enjoy the conversation.  God’s working in them.  He can use us if we are willing.

Something like 95 percent of American Christians will never share the good news of Jesus Christ.  I wonder why that is.  

We talk about discipleship and the importance of prayer.  We make a web of names of people in our lives who do not know Jesus.  And then the people connected to them.  We commit to praying for them, as their conversion could mean the conversion of their families and of their friends.  This is the story of the man who is teaching us. Through one, four have been saved.  This is the story of the disciples that Jesus sent out.  And those who believed shared and the sharing continues.  This is my story.  If it hadn’t been for someone sharing, I wouldn’t know. 

Noah (blue shirt) comes to the D.R. about 10 weeks a year and trains Haitian pastors.  This time, he also worked with Family ministry to train us in evangelizing.  Part of the vision for Makarios' families is that they would come to know Christ and be leaders in their communities.  This day, we found some people of peace right near the school and one of our fathers accepted Christ!

 It's Friday. I’m sitting in Bible Study with 4 high school girls.   We talk about God’s story and how He can change our’s.  We talk about the hope that Sylvia had because of her decision to have faith in what Jesus did on the cross and start walking toward Him.  We talk about how God changed us, our new lives, our hope for the future, and confidence in God that both Nicole and I have because of our faith in Jesus.  They listen. They are curious.  They are definitely people of peace.  I wonder what keeps them from making a decision for Christ. I know that God is working and am grateful for Him using me.

The next day  I am at Fundamentals of the Faith Bible Study.  Present are about 15 ladies - Dominican, Haitian, American. Missionaries, teachers, mothers and wives (some even of pastors). We represent various denominations, families, communities and churches. We sit and listen to Jenna talk about the topic for the month: Evangelism and the Believer.  

Jenna asks a group of faithful believers, "What keeps you from sharing your faith."  It’s a somewhat uncomfortable question.  We’re believers.  Some of us missionaries.  Others, pastor’s wives.  But if we are honest., we miss opportunities.  None of us shares the way that we should… with neighbors, strangers, or other people of peace in our midst.  What keeps us?  

Being vulnerable, we each answer.  Not surprisingly, fear and not feeling equipped are the two most common answers.  I wonder.  How are the churches equipping its people to not be fearful and to share their story and most importantly, God’s story?   

That afternoon we spend 2 hours at a memorial service for Sylvia.  The church is packed.  We hear                  songs  in French.  How Great is our God in English and Spanish.  There is a slide show and people get to            talk about what she meant to them. 

My Bible Study girls do a tribute to Sylvia at her memorial.

And the same day, Wesleyan arrives, my former school — with about 15 teenagers and some teachers.  I’m greeted by two teachers whom I know and most kids whom I’ve never seen before. I realize that I have connections to a few of them.  Throughout the week I pray for them, most of whom come from Christian families, many of whom are not yet believers.  I pray that God would open their eyes and that He would become king in their lives.  God gives me the opportunity to share His story with them.  

2018 Wesleyan Mission Trip Team

The following week, I’m sitting in the small classroom where we are teaching ladies to read.  There are 11 of them and a group of women from the community who make up the support team of teachers.  The women have never gone to school.  They’ve been coming for over 2 weeks, 3 days a week, and God is opening their brains to learn.  I sit as Tatis explains our problem as sinners.  This week in the devotion at the beginning of the class we are talking about sin.  He shows how sin separates us from God and how there is nothing we can do to be good enough to be able to be in relationship with God again.  That truth hits hard. It’s uncomfortable to sit in, but important to understand how unworthy we are of what Jesus did for us.

Literacy Program Big group where we concentrate on phonics.

Small group where the ladies rotate, receiving a reading lesson, writing lesson and input on the kids' ipads.

A few days later we are on vacation from school. All things Makarios related have ceased.  No pulling out kids, no literacy program, no meetings.  I take the time to go down to the capital, Santo Domingo, and visit a close family, to Juan Dolio where some missionary friends live, and to Quisqueya where I used to live.  

In Quisqueya, I find myself in the homes of each of the women that I used to disciple. Most are struggling.  All but one are still struggling to feed their families and three are far from the church.  Two are unwed and have since had babies.  Yet, I see that God is working.  I do not judge them.  I know that their lives are hard in a way that I have never experienced.  I praise him for being able to sit with each one, un-rushed and spend time encouraging and praying with them.  They all recognize their need for God.  Some just haven’t reached the end of their ropes and are still looking to other things as a fix.  Some don’t know yet that only in Christ is their hope found.   Only He can give them life.  God is working.  Two have stayed faithful to the local church and one is on her way to getting baptized.  In spite of hard relationships, she is learning in a weekly class more about the Bible and after finishing will be baptized.  
          

Ranyelis - one of the five "little" girls from Quisqueya.  She and her sisters seem to be doing well and are in school. 

Our second week out of school, Andrea and I sit on the couch at a 2nd graders’ sisters home.  His mom is there as they’ve been displaced while a home is being built for them in another community.  She tells us about her upbringing.  She says it was hard.  She talks about lack of daily necessities and manual labor.  She has grown up in the church but does not understand sin and our inability to save ourselves through the good things we do. We explain about this world’s brokenness — our brokenness.   We tell her that nothing that we do can fix it.  We talk about a need for a Savior. We explain God’s good news of Jesus taking our place when He died on the cross.  We explain about having faith and being repentant (turning 180 degrees in the other direction — towards God and not away from Him.) We explain new life, new relationship, and how God grows us each day.  We take time to pray.  I’m struck by the woman’s prayer to God.  It’s so sincere and yet so simple and she tells Him, "God, I think maybe my life is about to change.”  To God be all the glory.

God. He is still waiting.  He wants to be in right relationship with us.  He wants to give us new life.  While many people ask, “This good God, where is He?  So much brokenness?  Why does He allow it?” -- I understand that man’s decision to flee from God causes our brokenness, just as it did in the beginning when Adam sinned.  Our decision not to act in accordance to His will causes the pain and the corruption and the ugliness around us.  Our will, our thoughts, our actions.  And we deserve the worst punishment.  BUT GOD. In spite of what we deserve, He loves us. In spite of our decision to flee from Him, He provides a solution.  In 2 Peter 3:9, we are reminded that God is not slow but instead patient with us.  He is waiting for all of His family to come to know Him.

So to those know Him, for those of you who have faith and who believe and have turned away from the world, are you answering God’s call for you as a believer?  Are you helping others know that they don’t have to live in their brokenness, but that God redeems?  

Who are those people of peace around you?  They are there. Who one day will be in God’s family? We don’t know, but God does. Our responsibility if we are Christians is to be obedient as we go, share, and make disciples (Matthew 28:18-20).  God is already working.  What a privilege it is to get to be a part of that awesome work!

Please pray that I would be steadfast in prayer, being watchful and thankful.  Pray that God would open doors for me, Makarios, and believers in our community, to declare the mystery of Christ whenever given the opportunity.  Pray that we would be clear about God’s good news.  Please pray that I would walk in wisdom around those who do not yet believe, making the best of my time, and that my speech would always be gracious and seasoned with salt so that I would know how to always answer each person (Colossians 4:2-6).

Please also pray for:

The four girls in my Bible Study and the other leader, Nicole.  May we be loving, clear, and use wisdom in teaching God’s Word to them.  May God protect them from the temptations of this world and may they come to know Jesus as their Savior and King.

Makarios, as an organization,  as we go through changes in leadership.  May God give wisdom, patience and grace both to the leaders and to the staff.  May our eyes always be fixed on Him.

          This season in ministry.  It's full!  May I lean on Him for energy and not work out of my own                              strength.